


Never Let Me Go

by steel_trap



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Harry Potter Next Generation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-15
Updated: 2015-09-15
Packaged: 2018-04-20 20:48:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4801769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/steel_trap/pseuds/steel_trap
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Andromeda has had eleven years to prepare herself for this. She still isn't ready.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Never Let Me Go

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know what this is. It might be the epilogue of a longer story I have in the works. It might be a stand-alone fic.
> 
> Either way, I cried while writing it.

In his constant form, the boy looks every bit like his father: tall, lanky, and tawny of skin and hair. The resemblance has grown stronger every year, and by the time he is ready to begin his first year at Hogwarts he is Remus Lupin in miniature. Aside from the cheekbones, that is. Those are Nymphadora’s. And the boy wears them just as his mother did: prettily, and without the slightest hint of the haughtiness that so often marred the faces of the now all but extinct Blacks. 

It pains Andromeda to look at him sometimes—to see that small trace of her sweet, colourful daughter in this little boy. But she loves him. Merlin, she loves him so much that that sometimes pains her too.

She hugs him tight before he boards the Hogwarts Express and kisses him on both cheeks. His hair turns candy apple red, and she knows she is embarrassing him, but she cannot bring herself to release him just yet; letting her grandson go off to school is the hardest thing she has had to do since burying Nymphadora. 

“Please write, darling,” Andromeda says, her voice quavering from the effort of holding back tears. “Every day would be nice, but I’ll settle for once a week.”

“I will, Gran,” Edward Remus Lupin promises, nodding. His hair is morphing slowly back to turquoise—his colour of the week—but his cheeks are still flushed with mild mortification. “I will.”

“Put on your jumper before you arrive. It gets cold up there in the Highlands, even in September. And don’t eat too many sweets from the trolley or you’ll spoil your first feast. Do you still have those sandwiches I made for you? Oh, and—“

“Gran, chill out!” Teddy insists, attempting to disentangle himself from his grandmother’s grip. She keeps her arms locked around him, refusing to relent, but she turns her head to the side so he will not see the tears that have begun to drip down her cheeks. She closes her eyes.

“I love you very much,” she whispers, and it is to more people than just Teddy she speaks. Nymphadora. Ted. Remus and Sirius and a dozen others that the wars took from her all those years ago. She hopes they can hear her, wherever they are. And she hopes they will watch over this boy who is her whole world.

“I love you too, Gran,” Teddy says, sighing in defeat. He wraps his skinny arms around Andromeda’s middle and squeezes her tightly before backing out of her finally slackened embrace. He smiles up at her before something to the left of her catches his eye and he shouts, “You came!”

Andromeda turns to see Harry Potter standing on the platform. He is dressed in his Auror robes and looks slightly frazzled; he must have come straight from the Ministry. No longer is he the too-thin boy Andromeda met for the first time twelve years ago; Harry has grown into a healthy, happy man. He is devoted to Teddy—as devoted as if Teddy was one of his own brood of children. Andromeda is strangely proud of him. 

And she is glad he has come, for it gives her a chance to dry her eyes without Teddy noticing.

“’Course I came, you nutter,” Harry chuckles, enveloping Teddy in a hug when the boy launches himself at him. “I had to see you off, didn’t I?”

“I just thought… I mean, your job is—“

“Just a job,” Harry says, silencing his godson. “This is much more important.”

Teddy beams, and Andromeda, finally composed, nearly starts crying all over again. 

“I have a gift for you,” Harry says, reaching into the pocket of his robes. He pulls out two small, rectangular mirrors, each about the size of a deck of playing cards, and hands one of them to Teddy.

“A mirror?” Teddy asks.

“Not just any mirror. Take a look.”

Teddy obediently holds the mirror up, as if to examine his own face, and then gasps, “I can see you!”

“That’s right.” Harry is mimicking Teddy’s pose, holding the second mirror up in front of his own bespectacled face. “They’re two-way mirrors. So if you ever want to ta—“

“This is so _cool_!” Teddy yelps, silencing his godfather with another crushing hug. “Thank you!”

Harry opens his mouth to reply, but at that moment the Express’s whistle shrieks, signaling its imminent departure.

“Better get a move on, then,” Harry says, grinning down at Teddy. “Use that mirror tonight to tell me you’ve been sorted into Slytherin.”

“And just what is wrong with Slytherin?” Andromeda teases. She winks at Harry, then embraces Teddy in one last tight hug. “ _Write_ , Edward Remus. Or I’ll send you a Howler.”

“I will,” Teddy grumbles. But then he melts into his grandmother’s embrace for one more long moment and whispers, “I love you.”

“And I love you.” Reluctantly—so very reluctantly—Andromeda releases him. “Go on, now. Get back to that compartment where we put your trunk. Hurry!”

Teddy nods, already running. “Bye!” he calls over his shoulder, and soon he has been swallowed up—turquoise hair and all—by the crowd on the platform.

All of three seconds later, Andromeda goes to pieces.

Harry wraps an arm around her shoulders and she leans heavily against him, muffling her sobs in her floral scarf. Her Teddy is gone, and she knows that the few short months between now and Christmas will feel, to her, like years. And she is already worrying. Will he get enough to eat tonight? Will he sleep well? Will he make friends quickly? What if he gets homesick? What if—

“He’ll be fine, Andromeda,” Harry says, apparently reading her mind. His voice is gentle. “He’ll be fine.”

And Andromeda nods through her tears because she knows it’s true. He is so much like his parents, in more than just looks. He is kind and smart and sunny and brave and something else—something all his own that makes him so uniquely _Teddy_. He’ll be fine. She knows it.

She just wishes they were here with her. To weep. To worry. To watch him go.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm under the impression that Teddy's full name is Edward, like Ted's was. I'm probably wrong.


End file.
